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Bewilderment in Wake of Arrest of A.A.U. Coach

WASHINGTON — Sonny Vaccaro, a former sports marketing executive, said he was well aware of Curtis Malone’s checkered past when the two reached a sponsorship deal in 1993.

In his role with Adidas, Vaccaro was responsible for making sure that many of the country’s top young basketball players were outfitted in his company’s gear. As the coach of D.C. Assault, a high-octane Amateur Athletic Union team based in Washington, Malone was suddenly the man to know. Malone had served a prison sentence in 1991 after he pleaded guilty to drug charges, but he assured Vaccaro that those days were over.

“I got a good vibe from him,” Vaccaro said. “He convinced me that he was going to make this thing really big, and I believed him.”

Malone’s team made good on Vaccaro’s investment by emerging as one of the country’s most successful A.A.U. programs. In the coming years, as D.C. Assault collected titles, it became a magnet for college coaches. Dozens of the team’s best players earned scholarships to elite college programs like Illinois, Villanova and Georgetown.

At the center of it all was Malone, a power broker in the business of youth basketball.

Malone’s world came apart last week when he was arrested and charged with drug trafficking after a yearlong investigation by the Drug Enforcement Administration. He was indicted Wednesday by a grand jury in a United States District Court on charges that he had conspired to distribute large amounts of cocaine and heroin with two other men since at least August 2010. Malone, 45, who reportedly went by the aliases White Boy and Daddy, was denied bail.

Malone’s arrest appeared to come as a shock to those associated with D.C. Assault, many of whom quickly sought to distance themselves from him. In a statement, the team said that Malone had been less involved in D.C. Assault’s day-to-day activities in recent years and that he would no longer have a role with the organization. He had been serving as its president.

Damon Handon, D.C. Assault’s general manager, declined to comment when reached by telephone. “It’s a sensitive situation,” he said.

Two of the program’s coaches also declined to comment, referring all questions to Handon. Three other coaches did not return messages.

D.C. Assault has become a sprawling venture over the last 20 years, with nine youth basketball teams — including one for players age 11 and younger — that compete in national and regional tournaments. Its notable alumni include the Phoenix Suns’ Michael Beasley and the Boston Celtics’ Jeff Green and Keith Bogans. Three others are on Duke’s roster.

Mark Karcher, a former D.C. Assault player who went on to play at Temple, said he had known Malone half his life and described him as a “big brother.” When Karcher launched an A.A.U. program in Maryland two years ago, he leaned on Malone for guidance, he said.

“He was a role model to a lot of kids,” Karcher said. “He helped a lot of kids get to college, and he helped a lot of guys get coaching jobs.”

Photo

Curtis Malone led D.C. Assault, one of the most successful youth basketball programs, to numerous titles. He is charged with drug trafficking.Credit
Larry Morris/The Washington Post, via Getty Images

Fran Fraschilla, a former coach at Manhattan College and St. John’s, said he got to know Malone in the mid-1990s when Fraschilla made regular recruiting trips to Washington. Fraschilla said he remembered Malone as a soft-spoken and savvy presence on the A.A.U. circuit. Fraschilla said he was unaware that Malone had a criminal record until his arrest last week. He simply ran a prominent program that produced talented players.

“In the high school recruiting landscape, you deal with a lot of guys who are street guys, so to speak,” Fraschilla said. “It takes on a negative connotation when you’re involved with these types of things, obviously. But I had no idea what he was doing. I don’t think anyone did.”

Malone was arrested on Aug. 9 after federal agents searched his home in Upper Marlboro, Md., and reported that they had recovered a kilogram of cocaine, 100 grams of heroin and a handgun. The arrest came after law enforcement officials identified Malone as a drug supplier and wiretapped his phone, according to the court documents.

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As the leader of D.C. Assault, Malone developed relationships at almost every level of basketball. Many of his coaches at D.C. Assault used the program as a springboard toward staff positions at universities like Cincinnati, Texas Tech and Xavier. For college coaches, hiring someone from D.C. Assault was viewed as a way to gain access to many of Washington’s top players.

There may be no better example of D.C. Assault’s reach than Troy Weaver, who founded the A.A.U. program with Malone and is now a vice president and assistant general manager with the Oklahoma City Thunder. Before joining the Thunder, Weaver worked as an assistant coach at Pittsburgh, New Mexico and Syracuse.

“I am disappointed to hear of this situation but otherwise have no comment as it is a legal matter,” Weaver said in a statement.

D.C. Assault has been a polarizing force in high-powered basketball circles. Gary Williams, a former coach at Maryland, had a frosty relationship with Malone, a curious dynamic because Malone exerted great influence on many of the area’s most coveted high school players.

Williams, who retired in 2011, seemed to avoid the A.A.U. circuit and Malone in particular. In an interview with The Washington Post in 2009, Williams referred to Malone’s criminal past. “I know what he is,” Williams said at the time. Williams did not return a call seeking comment.

Malone enjoyed a far more fruitful relationship with Williams’s successor, Mark Turgeon, who hired Dalonte Hill, a former D.C. Assault coach, as one of his top assistants in 2011. Hill recently played a big role in the recruitment of Roddy Peters, a D.C. Assault standout who will be a freshman at Maryland this fall. A Maryland spokesman declined to make Turgeon and Hill available for interviews.

A spokeswoman for Under Armour, which has sponsored D.C. Assault since 2011, said the apparel company was not in a position to comment.

“This particular sport has been dragged over the coals,” said Vaccaro, the former Adidas executive who helped Malone get his program off the ground. “If Curtis did something wrong, it’s on him. It’s not on the system, and it’s not on these kids.”

Vaccaro added, “It’s one of those stories you pray you never hear about.”

A version of this article appears in print on August 17, 2013, on Page D6 of the New York edition with the headline: Bewilderment In Wake of Arrest Of A.A.U. Coach. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe